The Aesthetic Imperative: Four Perspectives on Aesthetics to Impact the User Experience

Aesthetic value can and should be part of the total design effort, including the information architect's perspective to achieve a 'total integrative experience.' Here are four ways to think about aesthetics and beauty to structure and focus the dialogue with UX peers: visual designers, programmers, content producers, strategists, etc.

Gajendar, Uday. IAsummit (2004). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design

The Blind Leading the Blind: Theorizing a Web for the Visually Impaired  

An examination of government websites (those required to adhere to Section 508) revealed no common practices or themes.

Moore, Jessica and Joseph Matthews. IAsummit (2004). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Section 508

Calculate Web Page Display Speed

Calculates the size of a web page and estimates its download time at various connection rates. It also gives you recommendations on how to improve page display time.

IAsummit (2004). Design>Web Design>Assessment>Bandwidth

Emerging Content Requirements for News Products  

Current trends in online news, and design issues for presentation of news content.

Williams, Howard. IAsummit (2004). Design>Information Design>Journalism

Enterprise Content Management: A Critical Review  

A presentation about the use of ECM within the CMSwatch website.

Byrne, Tony. IAsummit (2004). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Information Search Experience: Emotions in Information Seeking  

Description of a model for representing user search experiences.

Kalbach, James. IAsummit (2004). Articles>User Centered Design>Search

Information Visualization: Failed Experiment or Future Revolution?  

Information visualization (infoviz, for short) has been dismissed by many information architects as a good idea that hasn't panned out—a failed experiment. Now failure is a strong word that closes a lot of doors, and information architects like to keep their options open, so the preferred phrasing is 'I'm skeptical about information visualization's value proposition' or 'I'll believe it when I see it' or something like that.

Fast, Karl. IAsummit (2004). Design>Information Design>Graphic Design

Persona Creation and Usage Toolkit  

This toolkit enables you to build up detailed profiles of the personas themselves, their relationship to the product, and the context in which they use the product. The intended user of the toolkit is the product's designer, so it's it advisable to streamline the personas to critical aspects when presenting them outside the product development team. Even within the development team, not everyone may need every single detail about the persona.

Olsen, George. IAsummit (2004). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas

The Use of Narrative in Interaction Design  

What roles can narrative play in creating enriching experiences on the Web—not just for users, but also for design teams? Moving beyond the conceptual, we’ll discuss the practical application of narrative in web design, and describe how many of us within the industry already use narrative theory in our practice. Finally, we’ll show how even corporate projects can be approached within a holistic narrative framework and how this can benefit both usability and the design process.

Gallagher, Marisa, Nancy Broden, Jeff DeVries and Jonathan Woytek. IAsummit (2004). Presentations>Information Design>User Centered Design>Rhetoric

Using Machine Learning to Populate Dynamic Interfaces  

How can we bring machine learning techniques to bear on the problem of enabling dynamic search interfaces for complex document collections?

Efron, Miles. IAsummit (2004). Design>Web Design>User Interface

XIA@UT: An Extreme Makeover  

A presentation about applying concepts from extreme programming (XP) to the IA redesign of a web site (=XIA).

Burkart, Jill, Don Turnbull, Amaris Vigil, Andrew Switzky, Diana Miranda and Leonard Liaw. IAsummit (2004). Presentations>Information Design>Programming